Cannibal Reign (20 page)

“Uh-oh,” Erin said.

“She’ll be fine,” he said with a wave. “She’s just upset about those maniacs upstairs—that, and I won’t kiss her ass in front of everyone.”

Erin shook her head. “You’ll never change.”

“What makes me such a bad guy?”

“You’re not a bad guy, but would it hurt for you to pretend to be a little vulnerable for her?”

“That’s what she’s pissed about? My lack of vulnerability? E, me walking around down here all weepy-eyed won’t exactly instill confidence.”

Taylor retook her seat. “Well, I don’t think that’s the issue, Jackie pie. The issue is that Veronica doesn’t know how completely full of shit you are when you do things like manipulate people into making your coffee. I do, so it doesn’t bother me. But she thinks that guy’s real, and she doesn’t know how to reconcile him with the one she cares for.”

“And,” Erin added, “I don’t think it helps that Michael so openly dotes on Karen now. Women like to be doted on, you do remember?”

“So does she want Mike back or what?”

Taylor looked at Erin. “I think his brain is made of clay.”

Erin laughed. “He’s playing the dullard.”

“Forget it,” he said. “How soon until that coffee’s ready?”

“I’ll give you some goddamn coffee,” Taylor said. “Go find that girl right now and tell her how much you need her.”

He sat looking at her.

“Go and tell her. Now.”

“Damn!” he said, getting up. “You two always think you can order me around.”

“I’ll keep the pot warm, honey.”

Forrest found Veronica sitting with Melissa, who was helping a couple of the children with their math homework. Laddie was playing ball with the kids and came over to sniff at his pants pocket, pawing at his leg. Andie had managed to establish a genuine curriculum, and she’d done it with the complete support of the other mothers, which made it a joy for her as a teacher. And giving the children homework to complete outside of class kept them from playing the video games nonstop, allowing the video games to evolve into a kind of reward system.

“You’ve done an excellent job,” Forrest had said to her weeks earlier. “I was worried it might be tough to keep them occupied once they’d played every video game a thousand times.”

“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” Andie had replied with a smile.

Forrest stepped up behind Veronica where she sat at the table, taking a dog treat from his pocket and giving it to Laddie. “Talk to you a minute?”

“I’m busy.”

“Taylor won’t give me any coffee.”

“I don’t blame her.”

“Are you guys in a fight?” Melissa asked, noting the tension.

“I think so,” Forrest said. “I’m not sure.”

“My mommy and daddy fight a lot too,” one of the children said. “That’s why mommy had to get a court order.”

Forrest laughed. “You gonna get a court order, V?”

“How would I do that? You’re the king.”

“Well, that’s what I’d like to talk to you about.”

She looked up at him over her shoulder. “What’s that mean?”

“We can talk about it later, I guess. Sorry I bothered you.”

She watched him leave the room, then went back to helping the kids with the puzzle.

“Why do you do that?” Melissa asked.

“Do what, honey?”

“Sit there when you really want to go after him.”

“One day you’ll know.”

“Seems like a waste of time to me. I’d just go see what he wanted.”

Veronica looked at her, then got up and followed after Forrest, catching him outside blast tunnel number two. “Step into my office?”

“Sure,” he said.

They stepped into the tunnel and shut the door.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked.

“Look, I’m sorry if I come off as not needing you. I need you very much. It’s just that I can’t walk around down here acting like Mr. Softy. Nice guys don’t instill any confidence. These people need to see me acting like nothing fazes me.”

“Nothing does faze you.”

“Well, so what, Veronica? I’ve seen untold amounts of heinous shit in my life. What fazes me is you.
You
faze me. I think about you all goddamn day. I’m so fucking grateful that Karen and Mike hit it off that I don’t even know how to tell you. I can’t even imagine being trapped down here without you now. But I can’t walk around down here like I’ve got Cupid’s dick stuck up my ass either.”

She smiled and used her thumb to squeeze the tears from her eyes. “Did T and E tell you to say that?”

“The Cupid part or the rest of it?”

“I know the disgusting shit is all you. The first part, the sweet part.”

“Of course they told me what to say. I’m too much of a goddamn man to think up mushy shit like that.”

She put her arms around him and they kissed.

The door at the far end opened and Tonya stepped into the tunnel from the missile silo, hesitating when she saw them.

“May as well come on out,” Forrest announced. “You’re busted.”

She came down the tunnel biting her lips between her teeth. “I was helping Marcus find the canned corn,” she said, averting her eyes.

Forrest laughed. “Well, the corn’s over in silo one.”

“Must be why we couldn’t find it,” she said, slipping past them and out of the tunnel.

Veronica slapped him on the shoulder. “That wasn’t nice!”

“She’s an adult. She doesn’t have to apologize for getting shagged. And I don’t have to pretend to the look the other way.”

A few seconds later the door opened again and Kane stepped into the tunnel, a grin spreading across his face. “Either of you see a cute little black chick pass this way?”

“She said she was looking for the canned corn,” Forrest said.

Kane laughed. “I told her to say we were looking for paper towels.”

“Well she cracked under the pressure.”

“You two are terrible,” Veronica said, still hanging against Forrest.

Kane laughed and stepped out of the tunnel, shutting the door after him.

“So are we okay?” Forrest asked. “Or do I need to grovel a little bit?”

She let go of him and pulled her hair behind her ears. “I’m sorry for walking off like I did. I’ve never been any good at . . . at arguing.”

“Don’t apologize. That’s not a bad thing.”

“Yes, it is,” she said. “I should do a better job of expressing myself when I’m upset. It’s a childhood thing.”

He kissed her again. “You’re fine.”

“Did they do anything terrible to those women upstairs?”

“Yes, they did. And that’s as much you need to hear. Let’s go get me some coffee.”

“Do you think maybe we can go looking for that canned corn later on? I understand it might be missing.”

“On second thought,” he said, taking her hand, “why don’t we go see if we can find it right now?”

I
n the morning, Forrest arrived with Laddie in Launch Control for a look at the monitors, and the first thing he saw was the man in the camouflage jacket laying faceup on the living room floor with the Bowie knife sticking out of his neck. “What the hell happened?”

“Like that?” Ulrich asked, looking up from a
Popular Science
article on wind power. “That’s what we saw with first light. Those girls got loose and did his ass in. They took both shotguns and all four bags of meat. Even the blankets.”

“Well good for them,” Forrest said. “I was worried that guy was going to move in for a while. We’d have had to do something.”

“Which would have been stupid,” Ulrich remarked. “I’m glad they’re gone.”

“How’d they get those locks open, you wonder?”

“They’ve probably watched and memorized the combinations by now.”

“But how’d they work the combinations in the pitch-dark?”

“First, light must come inside the house before the monitors pick it up,” Ulrich said, bringing up the bathroom feed. “See the chain on the bathroom floor? They needed the mirror to work the combination at their necks. One would assume their antagonist was dead by then.”

“One would assume,” Forrest chuckled.

“We’ve got another birthday today, by the way. Maria two’s kid. She’s seven.”

Birthdays were good days because everybody got a cake for their birthday, and it cheered everyone up, especially the child of the day who got to play video games while everyone else was in class.

“I’ll be back,” Forrest said.

He took Laddie with him to the cargo bay where he kept the novelties, sorting through crates of odds and ends until he found a coloring book full of pictures of a sponge named Bob, along with a brand-new eight-pack of crayons. “It’s not exactly a GI Joe with the Kung Fu grip,” he said to the dog, “but everyone’s gotta get something on their birthday, right?”

Laddie grumbled and sniffed around in the box, finding a blue racquetball and trotting off toward the door with it.

“Hey, it ain’t your birthday. Come put that back!”

Thirty-Four

M
arty and his two Army buddies finally made their way back to his house on foot. The Air Force was all over town now, and it took the three of them two days to get back to his house and avoid the armored vehicles. Twice during the day, they were spotted and forced to fight a running battle until they finally lost their pursuers. Now Sullivan stood looking over Joe’s four-door Jeep Rubicon in the beam of his red light, noting the bad dents left in the hood by meteorite impacts, the hole in the hard top.

“This is about the most aggressive tire tread you can get on a civilian vehicle,” he said. “Good call, Miller.”

But Marty wasn’t paying him much real attention. He was busy looking at the ruins of his home through the night vision device, thinking of his wife and child beneath the rubble, feeling that the weight of his despair might crush him. He wished Emory and Sullivan would take the Jeep and leave without him so he could sit down in the midst of the ruins and blow his brains out—and had he thought for even a moment that he might actually get to be with Susan again on the other side, he would have done exactly that. But he knew better, so he turned around and walked over to Sullivan in the darkness.

“I’d rather you didn’t call me Miller,” he said quietly. “I’d consider it a personal favor.”

“It was just a joke.”

“Anything but Miller,” Marty said. “I’ve got his blood all around my neck.”

Emory found a roll of duct tape in a garage across the street and used it to black out all of the brake lights and turn signals. She taped over the headlights so that only an inch-wide horizontal space was exposed across the center of each lamp.

Sullivan bumped Marty on the shoulder, and Marty turned around to see him standing there with a red, one-gallon gas can in his hand. “Strip that tunic a minute.”

Marty took it as an opportunity to practice stripping his gear, and handed over the mandarin-collared ACU jacket. Sullivan then asked him to hold the light while he poured gasoline on the collar of the jacket and scrubbed it against itself to get the blood out. He then squeezed the excess gasoline from the cloth and gave the jacket back.

“Better?”

Marty shrugged back into the jacket. At any other time in his life, the smell of gasoline on his clothing would have made him sick, but under the present circumstance it smelled wholly appropriate. “Thanks, Sully.”

“Sullivan . . . Sully was my dad.”

“Hooah,” Marty said.

They were on the road a short time later, searching for the best way to refuel the Jeep. By pure dumb luck they came across an abandoned eighteen-wheeled Shell tanker and filled up the Jeep, along with Joe’s two remaining fuel cans.

Sullivan drove and Marty rode shotgun. Emory sat in the backseat with her M-203 grenade launcher. Anyone attempting to chase them down would get the shock of their lives.

“This guy Joe,” Sullivan said, shifting into drive. “He was a good friend?”

“He was the best friend anybody could ever hope for,” Marty said.

“Well, he sure left you a fine set of wheels.”

It occurred to Marty then, for the very first time, that he and Joe had a great deal in common now. “It’s a good Jeep,” he said.

They drove back into town and Sullivan parked as close to the Air Force perimeter as he dared. “They’re keeping their supplies in what they consider to be their rear on their northern perimeter. We can keep to the side streets and walk right up to their supply column like I did the other night. They’ve still got night vision but they’re not keeping up a very good watch.”

“What if we swipe one of their chargers?” Marty asked. “Plug it into the cigarette lighter here in the Jeep? That way we could drive without headlights, right?”

“Let’s not get greedy,” Sullivan said.

“What’s one look like?” Marty said. “I’m wearing an Air Force uniform.”

“Whoa!” Emory said. “You can’t even walk the walk, Marty, much less talk the talk. And you’re wearing Adidas.”

“Who looks at anybody’s feet in the dark?” Marty argued.

“He’s a got a point,” Sullivan said. “And a charger would be a big advantage. Otherwise, these NVDs will be useless in a day or two.”

“He’s got a death wish is what he’s got,” Emory said.

“No, I don’t, Shannon. I really do want to see the crater.”

Emory reluctantly agreed, then they came up with a plan. They used the night vision devices attached to their helmets to cover the last two blocks, easily slipping through the Air Force perimeter undetected. They grabbed two cases of MREs apiece from the nearest deuce-and-a-half, each case containing twelve complete meals, and hurried back to the edge of the perimeter. There were a number of sentries posted, but they were either sleeping or busy talking, most of them in total darkness with NVDs in the up position on the front of their helmets. Apparently they were feeling invincible now that the Mongol threat had been smashed.

The trio stashed the food in a safe place and made their way back to the supply trucks, searching the cab of each for a charger. Not finding one, they were forced to penetrate deeper within the Air Force perimeter, finally taking cover behind a U-Haul truck near a well-lighted repair station where a number of airmen stood around talking and smoking cigarettes. A large green diesel-powered generator was running at the back of the repair bay, providing heat as well as light to a row of six fifty-three-foot Air Force trailers parked to the right of the garage.

“That’s a command car over there,” Sullivan said, pointing across the lot to an armored Humvee festooned with multiple radio antennae.

“If they don’t have one in there,” Emory said, “they don’t have one.”

“I’ll be back,” Marty said, and stepped boldly from behind the truck into the light before Emory could grab him.

“He does have a goddamn death wish!” Sullivan hissed, bringing his M-4 to bear, sighting on the group of nine airmen inside the bay.

“I told you,” she muttered, doing the same, her finger on the trigger of the M-203.

The airmen glanced in Marty’s direction as he strolled casually across the lot with the carbine slung over a shoulder, his hand in his pocket, waving lazily as he passed within a hundred feet of the open door. The wave was returned by a couple of the airmen who went right back to their bullshitting.

“Check that out,” Emory said.

“I’m still gonna jerk a half-hitch in his ass . . .
if
we survive this.”

Marty walked past the trailers and over to the command car, which sat out of view from the garage, cloaked in shadow. He opened the far-side door and got in, shutting the door and using his red light to have a look around. There was a charger on the deck between the seats, resting on top of a grenade-bearing vest containing a dozen 40mm grenades. In the backseat he saw a medical bag like the one Emory had worn over her shoulder the day he and Susan met her.

The grenade vest was confusing at first, but Marty was getting the hang of the military’s tricky contraptions, so he managed to shrug into it without much trouble. He tucked the charger away in his harness, shouldered the med kit, and got out of the Humvee.

He heard a woman’s muted cry and froze. A man laughed. Marty looked up at the windows of the trailers, and his skin tightened into gooseflesh as he realized what the trailers were being used for.

“No more,” he muttered, taking Joe’s .45 from its holster and stalking through the darkness to the closest trailer. He stepped onto the stairs and slowly opened the door.

“G
et ready to run,” Sullivan said, watching Marty through his NVD.

“Go ahead, split,” Emory said. “I can’t leave him.”

“You’ve got a death wish too now?”

“No,” she said, resigned to her fate. “But I like the guy. He saved my ass.”

“Fuck all,” he muttered, sighting down the barrel of his M-4 and getting ready to do battle.

“Go on, Sullivan. You don’t need to stay here. You can make a good run without us. There’s enough food back there to last you a couple of months.”

“Can’t do it,” he said. “You might be my only chance of ever getting laid again.”

She patted him on the shoulder. “In that case, hon, you’d definitely better go. I’m playing for the other team.”

He took his eye from the scope just long enough to see if she was kidding. “Still,” he said. “I got a pretty good tongue. You might get desperate.”

“Hoo
ah
,” she said with a chuckle, and prepared herself to meet death standing up.

M
arty stepped into the trailer with the pistol concealed behind his thigh to find an Air Force sergeant sitting at a desk reading
Hustler
magazine. The sergeant pulled himself out of his fantasy and set the magazine aside, having a look at his clipboard and frowning as he flipped to the next sheet of paper.

“You’re confused, Miller. You’re not up until tomorrow night.”

“No, I’m up right now,” Marty said, pointing the pistol into the sergeant’s face, seeing that his name was Priest.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Priest said, cautious but unafraid. “You got shit for brains? You can’t wait twenty-four hours? Put that fucking thing away before I report your ass to Moriarty.”

“How many men in the back?” Marty asked.

The sergeant gave him a queer look, noting the dark stain on the collar of Marty’s jacket. “Who the fuck are you, buddy?”

“Priest, I’m not your buddy. So unless you’d like to die with me, you’d better answer my question.”

“Six,” Priest said, his mouth suddenly dry. “Three broads to a side.”

Marty took a look around, now noticing the six rifles in a rack on the wall behind the desk. “Get the fuck out,” he said, stepping aside and waving the sergeant toward the door.

Priest kept his hands shoulder high as he came around the desk, and Marty belted him in the back of the head with the pistol as he passed.

Now, in every movie he had ever seen where a man got whacked in the back of the head with a gun, the guy always fell down; Priest did not fall down. What Priest did was grab the back of his head and spin around, swearing aloud and forcing Marty to belt him again, only this time on the top of the skull, which knocked Priest to his knees, but he still didn’t fall over. So Marty bashed him a third time, much harder, and the sergeant finally fell over, but he still wasn’t knocked out. He was, in fact, now sobbing like a child.

This put Marty in a serious quandary, mindless brutality not really being his field of expertise.

“Don’t hit me anymore,” the sergeant whimpered. “I can’t see. Jesus, you’ve blinded me!”

Marty was suddenly feeling so bad for the man that he nearly started crying himself. “Don’t fucking move!” he hissed.

“I won’t,” whimpered the severely injured man. “I swear!”

Marty went down the hall and opened the first door to find a man humping a woman in her mid-forties. She had blond hair and was staring off into deep space.

“What the fuck?” the naked man said, climbing off the cot from between the woman’s legs. “Get the fuck—”

Marty shot him in the throat and turned around, kicking open the door to the room directly across the hall, where another woman was being violated. He shot the man in his stomach and turned to face down the hall, shooting each of the three men to emerge from their rooms. The sixth man had obviously chosen to hide, so Marty walked over the bodies and opened the door to find him cowering on the bed with his hands over his head. He was a young airman, no older than nineteen. The woman he had been molesting, even younger than her tormentor, was obviously in a deep fog like the others.

Marty shot him in the head, nearly jumping out of his skin a second later to the sound of a thunderous explosion outside the trailer.

“Kill me,” the girl begged. “Please!”

Marty stepped forward, kissing his fingers and touching them to her forehead.

“Close your eyes,” he said gently, hearing the sounds of men clamoring out of the next trailer, followed by those of automatic rifle fire. The girl closed her eyes and he did the same as he held the barrel of the .45 near her temple and pulled the trigger. The slide locked back on the weapon as the last shell was ejected, and he turned from the room without looking at her, ejecting the spent magazine and slapping in a new one. He did not look into the other rooms he passed, holstering the pistol and unslinging his carbine as he made for the door, stepping over the sergeant’s now lifeless body where he still lay on the floor in front of the desk.

“W
hat the fuck’s he doing in there?” Sullivan said as they stood waiting to find out what would happen.

Ninety seconds later three half-naked men came piling out of the adjacent trailer with rifles in hand. Apparently none of the airmen in the garage had been able to hear Marty’s shots over the generator, but the men next door had.

“The jig’s up!” Emory said. “I got the garage.”

Sullivan shot down the men coming from the trailer as Emory fired a grenade into the bay, hitting the generator and blowing the men in the garage to kingdom come. He shot more half-naked men as they came scrambling from the trailers, and he nearly shot Marty too as he came running across the lot with ever more men showing up out of the darkness.

“The fuel truck!” Sullivan shouted, banging Emory on the helmet and pointing far to the right of the trailers. “Burn it down!”

She fired a grenade and blew up the fuel truck, roasting a number of airmen as they were running past it.

Marty made it back unscathed and the three of them slipped away into the night, grabbing up the stashed MREs along the way.

“You stupid fuck!” Sullivan said later, tossing the cases of MREs onto the ground near the Jeep. “What the fuck was that about? Huh?”

“I couldn’t find a charger in the command car,” Marty lied. “So I decided to check the trailer.” He pulled the charger from inside his vest. “I got this med kit, and some more grenades for Shannon’s popgun too.”

“Never again!” Sullivan said, jamming his finger into Marty’s face. “Never again! And I want your goddamn word! You don’t have the right to play games with my life!”